Do you live in at fault auto insurance state?

Find cheap sr22 insurance quotes online. In any revised fault system, it is essential that the compensation of accident victims be broadened to include those who at present are denied effective recovery due to the lack or inadequacy of insurance coverage. Compulsory insurance or strictly enforced financial liability must be instituted at sufficient limits to compensate the seriously injured.
Too often the victim has been left holding a verdict that he found impossible to convert to cash because there was no insurance coverage to pay for it. Even where protection against uninsured motorists is purchased, the limits are so low that they are insufficient to help the victim with large- scale damages. Yet the absence and inadequacy of personal injury coverage is still being disregarded by most no-fault reforms.

One mutually advantageous way law and insurance can be wed is through merit-rating. Surveys show that motorists overwhelmingly prefer to have the cost of their insurance related to their own driving record. For merit-rating to be meaningful, there must be mechanisms for assessing fault. While no-fault proponents say that fault cannot be determined, the evidence is to the contrary. Accidents are caused by driver error, and merit-rating is one way of fairly spreading the cost of insurance to those who cause accidents. But merit-rating, on the basis of accident frequency alone, defeats its purpose. There must be a qualitative dimension that takes fault into account.

Regardless of whether fault or no-fault prevails, another look is required at the sometimes superficial categories set up for rate-making purposes. These categories are based on age, geographic location, occupation, and so forth. Often they have nothing to do with individual merit. There are instances in which insurance has been made prohibitively expensive for the old, young, and culturally disadvantaged. In the only year that Massachusetts attempted merit-rating, there was a decrease in the total cost of automobile insurance premiums. Merit-rating was abandoned when the insurance companies objected to the additional costs of score- keeping necessary to keep track of chargeable demerits. Compare sr22 insurance rates now.

The law of negligence and insurance have also come together in a state automobile insurance proposal suggested by John R. Jewell, the Insurance Commissioner of Maryland. After studying the various no-fault plans, the decision was made that the disadvantages of no-fault outweighed its advantages. Abandoning the possibility of no-fault, Jewell came up with the “pay as you drive” plan, a state-operated program that would transfer a portion of automobile insurance from the private companies to a state agency.

The plan combines social and private insurance. If the driver wants excess coverage, the plan assumes that, just as in the Puerto Rico and Saskatchewan plans, the private companies will supplement the minimum state coverage. Its announced goal would be the elimination of the vexations and discriminatory cancellations on motor vehicle insurance. No one in Maryland could have his insurance canceled if his car was duly registered.